


when words are not enough

by pyrrhlc



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Multi, V.F.D., and general sadness, you know the drill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 02:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14945693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhlc/pseuds/pyrrhlc
Summary: Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it.Lemony thinks back to the last time he saw his brother. Set some time  before TVV.





	when words are not enough

****Some of the world’s worst treachery occurs because noble people are too tired to do anything about it.

I’m sure you’ve experienced this kind of treachery yourself, a phrase which here means “been forced to wash the dishes of your egregious and untidy flatmate just because he or she is lazy and underqualified.” “Egregious” is an interesting word if one happens to be interested in etymology – that is, the study of words and their origins, not to be confused with entomology, which is the study of insects – as it is one of the few words in English whose meaning has been completely reversed over time. One could say the same of noble people, perhaps, or noble statues, or even noble cats and dogs. Over time, anything can reverse its nature – and anything can appear to be what it was once not. This is one of the reasons that noble people are so tired: in a world as egregious as this, it can be very hard to know just who is noble – and who is not.

This is a short account, and an unverifiable one, “unverifiable” here meaning that you will never know if it is absolutely true. Stories can be absolutely true, as can myths, but what is typed on a typewriter by a sad man of thirty whilst living alone in a room full of rats and peeling wallpaper can never be ascertained to be entirely verifiable, as that man is no doubt very tired and very afraid of the rats living in the vicinity. Rats can do awful things to one’s consciousness, if one allows them to. It is at my greatest discretion that I am implore you to never follow in the footsteps of a book named after a very specific date.

My unverifiable account would not be of much interest were it not for the circumstances that I found myself in at the time of the encounter. You will find yourself in many different circumstances over the years, but it is my solemn wish that you never find yourself in similar circumstances to the ones I myself was in at the time. The wallpaper was indeed peeling. The rats were not entirely afraid of me. Sat at my desk, with my suitcase beside me in case I should need to flee, I could hear quite distinctly the dripping of an untameable faucet. It was a terrible place to be, but it was also the only place in the world nobody would look for me. This is very important when you are trying to hide from those who want to kill you. It allows you to live for a little longer, and living a little longer is almost always preferable to the alternative. I continued to type despite the obstacles and the rat chewing at one of my shoelaces.

In fact, I was so deeply engrossed with the task at hand I did not even see the door open. One should never drop one’s guard like this, the phrase “drop one’s guard” here meaning to imagine that you will ever truly find a safe place. There was only one safe place in the world at that moment, and in a few months more it would go up in flames, with myself watching it, from an unbearably safe distance, holding onto both a very important object and an age-old accordion. For now, I was adeptly fooled that this place in itself was sacred. It was not.

The door opened. It was my brother.

“Lemony,” he said. I do not know how he got the door open, or how he had found me, but I knew it was a bad sign. I lifted the lid onto my typewriter and got up to leave. Jacques, being Jacques, closed the door so that this action was impossible.

“I have to talk to you,” he said, as I began packing my remaining belongings into my suitcase. The rat, apparently, wanted to come too. I brushed it away. I looked up at him as I fastened the clasps of the suitcase.

“Difficult to talk with a dead man,” I said. “You might want to try a séance.”

“Lemony—”

“I hear they can be quite successful.”

“ _Lemony_ ,” he said, grinding his teeth. It is difficult to sound angry at a person you had thought dead, and I could see it in my brother’s eyes. He pointed at the sagging bed just behind me, which I had spent a considerable amount of my time not sleeping in during the last few weeks. This was not a safe place, I thought, because my brother had found me, and if my brother had found me then so could anyone else. The thought made my unaccountably nervous. I sat down anyway.

“Jacques,” I said, as calmly as I could. It seemed we were going to spend all afternoon repeating each others’ names. “What do you want?”

Jacques leaned back against the desk. It trembled slightly under his weight. It had trembled under the weight of the typewriter, too, but I hadn’t had the time to feel unnerved. I had needed to write. All my life I have found that writing appears to help in difficult situations, but it did not appear able to help me in this one. I sat down my typewriter alongside my suitcase.

Jacques’ expression looked just as it had done all those years ago, whenever I chose to do something that was not to his liking. He had told me, then, that I had a problem with authority. I didn’t disagree.

“I want you to come back to headquarters,” he said at last, his eyes meeting mine. He looked like my brother, but he also looked like a very tired man indeed. “Kit has to know.”

This, I admit, I was surprised by. “You haven’t told her?” I asked. Hadn’t told her I was alive. Hadn’t told her anything that would give her hope. Why was I surprised? It was a smart move.

In response, Jacques pursed his lips. “I haven’t seen her. In fact, I have no idea where she is.”

I said nothing to that. Jacques was wrong. Kit did not have to know that I had been mistakenly labelled deceased. She did not have to know anything that would put her in the slightest bit of danger. And, for that matter, neither did Jacques. I sighed and picked up my hat from the bed’s headboard. It was an unremarkable hat, but I had developed a strange fondness for it over the past few months. Everyone in the world needs at least one unremarkable hat.

“I’m leaving,” I said to my brother, instead of the other things I would’ve liked to say to him, such as “I love you,” or “You shouldn’t have tried to find me,” or “Please keep both yourself and our sister away from the terrible things that are about to happen.” I couldn’t have said any of these things, but I wanted to. I had a sneaking suspicion that I would not be seeing my brother again for a long time – possibly ever – and I was right.

There is a French idiom that talks of giving one’s tongue to the cat, a phrase which here means “to give up, not only on the opportunity to see your siblings reunited, but also on the possibility that any one of you, in any capacity, will ever be happy again.” I had given my tongue to the cat, as well as plenty else, and it was clear that my brother could see it in me that I wasn’t going to try any harder to listen to him. I had given up my tongue, and my siblings, and the company of others, so that they could live in the world a little safer for a little longer. It had not worked for Beatrice, but perhaps it would work for them.

I was wrong about this, as I often am, but one hardly likes to be reminded of the fact that they are the last of their nuclear family. No one likes to be last, myself least of all. It is an incredibly lonely thing – like losing at an egg-and-spoon race and having the whole world know what a failure you are. It is not at all pleasant. It is something akin to hell.

Back in the present, where my brother still lived, I began to tidy up my possessions. Jacques did not move from where he was leaning against the desk. He simply watched me – watched me fold up my shirts and socks and disguise kit and put on my coat, and sighed when he realised he would not be able to say any of the things he would want to say, either. I know how he felt. It’s all anyone has felt for hundreds of years.

Some of the world’s worst treachery occurs because noble people are too tired to do anything about it. And sometimes, that’s just how the world is.

He held out his hand to me, and I held out my hand to him, and both of us pretended to believe that we would see each other again in a place that was appropriate to the time and setting. It was a lie, but it was a lie sustained by both of us, and so it wasn’t hard to trick myself into believing it, just as I had once believed that the pen was mightier than the sword, and that those who read books were always good people. It is easier to trick yourself into believing something that you want to believe. It is what makes life more bearable, less breakable than the average sugar bowl.

It was not enough, but it could certainly have been worse. Reflecting upon the memory now doesn’t yield much more than a few bars of Biloshytsky and coffee, if I am lucky. And I have always hated coffee.

He did not hug me, and I did not hug him. We shook hands together like strangers, and then, like smoke, I left.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel for Lemony, honestly. It doesn’t get much worse than being hounded by your enemies whilst also being thought dead by everyone you love. Sad accordion music always gets me thinking about these good good siblings.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave a comment and/or some kudos. The starving writer appreciates it in this time of intense coursework.
> 
> [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnz_d9gyS8k) was the Biloshytsky piece I was thinking of whilst writing those last few lines, just in case you were curious.


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